Saturday, 18 January 2014

Time to Begin

At last it was time to begin my sketchbook. I decided to cover my book and found some handmade paper from a company called wildpaper.co.uk. They had just what I was looking for, natural paper with fern prints. After covering the book I then worked on the title page with simple sketches and writing in pen. I tried to echo the lines of the fern shapes with the writing but kept it all pretty simple.

Then what to do for the first double page spread. Hmmm. I wanted to keep it seasonal so my theme for
January was winter birches, one of my favourite trees. I went out to my local woods with my old sketchbooks and drew the trees,with pen and wash and then sketched the mosses and lichens that are found on the birch bark. The weather has been so wet and dismal that I sat in my car in the car park of the woodland and sketched! Got to keep the pages (and myself) dry!! Armed with plenty of sketches I went home and drew them up neatly in the new book.

I wanted to add some words or poetry so I made up an acrostic poem using the word BIRCH, great fun.
These sketches are actually a bit unusual for me,so neat and tidy. My normal sketchbooks are a real mess, with terrible writing and quite scruffy! But the thought of other artists looking closely at your work is enough to make you tidy it up!

The books themselves are great to work with; having very thick paper that took my washes and pen without showing through. The surface is smooth so perfect for showing up detail.

It is thrilling to be a part of this venture and to share it with such lovely people. Although the thought of drawing in another's book is quite daunting at times. But it will be a challenge and I hope my contributions will live up to expectations and most of all, will be enjoyed.